Chapter Thirty-Eight

The door was a nightmare to open, slow to unseal, and when it did? Something was propped up against it, making it a pain in the ass to see around.

Todds had needed to cut into the wall itself to deactivate the locking mechanism, and when he’d reached the section he needed, despite the distant noises that we could hear filtering down to us, he swore that whatever was going on in there, the door at least, was long abandoned.

When it finally swung open, rust cascading off in flakes and a squeal fit to wake the dead echoing around the space, the sight before us was the last thing I’d ever expected to see, as piled debris collapsed to the right and left, freeing the entryway.

The five of us stood there, trying to make sense of it at first, considering how deep underground we were, but this place?

We’d exited the passage into this new room about halfway up, the door we’d entered through leading to gantry that in turn lead up to the next level to our left, and down to the level below to the right.

That was fine, hell, that was practically normal . What wasn’t fine? The central hollow mass of the structure we found ourselves in was filled with rows upon rows of bodies attached together on a slowly rotating gantry that reminded me of the old pictures of chickens on rotisseries.

From where we were, we could see hundreds, possibly thousands of bodies, and they were alive, or at least active. They twitched in undulating rhythms, masks over their heads, cables and hoses leading into the masks and plugged in over and over across their bodies, siphoning out some liquids, forcing in more.

They were spread out like starfish, head upright, arms out to the sides, legs spread, connecting posts running from one limb to the next, keeping them on their ‘mount’ as it gently swung, a connection at the top and bottom locking each into place with inches to spare before the next body in line.

This wasn’t what I’d been expecting, this was a thing of nightmares! Hundreds, probably thousands of people were connected to the great construction, with a solid thrum of power filing the air, hoses were humming liquid being harvested… I moved forwards to the edge of the gantry, looking out over and down, seeing at least five more levels disappearing downwards from here, and three more leading up, the air was suddenly hot and humid I realized, and here and there below us, I saw automated machines moving on rails, selecting a ‘frame’ with its humanoid occupant and removing it, replacing it with one that thrashed and gargled as they tried to escape the tubes.

“What the absolute fuck is this place?” Reign asked in a hushed whisper.

“I have no idea,” I admitted. “The signs were that there was a major infestation, but this?”

“An infestation of…?” Luna asked.

“Specters,” I said. “It looked like specters, what the hell do you think I’d be bringing us here for? This is…”

There was a sound from above, and we all looked up, seeing another machine, this one though? It wasn’t here to change the frames.

It saw us, and its guns opened up.

“Fuck, run!” I barked, lifting my rifle and opening fire as it did, bullets slamming into its armoring as it closed on us, its own fire sparking and ricocheting around us. Todds twisted, ready to race back into the passage we’d come from, only to have a secondary door, one suspended over the first, slide down with a clang as the structure sealed itself.

I had moved too, and barely managed to stop from hitting the now sealed door, turning and racing for the pile of debris we shoved aside to enter.

There were piles of steel, sheeting and more there, and it’d at least absorb a few of the bullets for us.

The machine though? I had no idea if it was sentient, if it was a defender and running on automation or what the hell it was, but the damn thing had more limbs than any spider, it was climbing down the wall towards us using the rails, the tubes, piping and wall supports.

It had an ovoid central body, two upper and two lower mounts each with what looked like standard assault rifles attached, but belt-fed rather than magazine, a dozen or more eyes on the front, long tentacle-like arms and as it flowed down the wall, alarms started up all around.

The clangs of more doors being sealed rang out distantly, as the assault rifles chattered, bullets tracing the path behind us as the machine navigated obstructions, clearly used to the paths it needed, as we ran, dodging hails of fire, sliding under the piled scrap.

Turrets spun up around us on the walls, one managing to tag me on the left side, denting an armor plate and making me gasp in pain as I returned fire and took the fucker down.

I barely made it under cover as more opened up, Reign ahead of me, slinging her grazer, clearly deciding that there was fuck all flesh to effect on this thing, and dragging her sniper rifle into place instead.

Luna and Gessh backed up, firing at the machine, peppering it with dozens of rounds, and Todds was frantically searching for a more defensible location, while taking down turrets as fast as he could.

“Reign, fuck that shit up!” I ordered her, before wincing as one of the ricocheted bullets from the girls sparked off and hammered into a frame loaded body.

The bullet passed straight through, leaving a spray of blood on the one behind it, as the first sagged, then started thrashing.

“Fuck!” I snarled, knowing damn well we should be rescuing these people, but that we could only do that if we won this fight.

I searched the area, quick as I could, taking two more turrets down as I leant aside, then ducked, avoiding return fire. I saw two options, first, we stayed where we were, fired on the damn thing—Reign was even now lining up a shot—until it was dead, and then we dealt with whatever else came along, or we moved.

We had limited cover where we were, sheets of tubing and more, clearly used in repairs and in forming the interior of this place were piled here, but that was it, we were already hiding behind it, and it wasn’t like it was light enough we could hide beneath it.

The machine was clambering out as much as down, clearly moving to put itself in a position where it could get at us without the limited cover we had.

Luna cried out then, falling as she failed to dodge fast enough, and several shots landed at once, hitting her in one of her modified legs.

She hit the floor, falling out of cover, and I cursed, all of us opening fire at once, peppering the outside of the machine with small arms fire, as Gessh dragged her sister back into cover.

“Fucking come on Reign!” I barked, dropping my rifle and dragging the shotgun free, pumping it and firing a solid slug at the thing.

It twisted, the slug glancing off, making it clear that the armoring was heavy enough to ignore just about anything, when Reign finally fired.

The machine was halfway down to us, braced atop an outrunning post that helped to hold the forms in place, and clinging to the underside of a crossing gantry, when she shot it.

She’d clearly been taking her time, knowing she’d only get one chance before she was identified as the main threat, and whoo-boy was she the main threat.

The solid round was both armor piercing by dint of being fired from a fucking sniper rifle, and being a specially designed round to do maximum penetrative damage, and it showed.

One of the creature’s eyes exploded, the round punching through the camera system and burrowing deep inside, taking out who knew how many other systems before it ran out of energy, but the effect was clear.

One side of the machine simply shut down, the arms releasing, and it fell. The other side wasn’t strong enough, or wasn’t ready at any effect, and the sudden shift threw off both its aim, and its timing.

It’d been moving forwards, multiple arms releasing and clinging onto things at the same time. When half simply released all at once?

It fell, a single arm trying to cling on and only succeeding in sending it swinging into the wall, head first.

It hit with a crash of breaking glass and resounding steel on steel, before tumbling free, hitting the gantry way below and bouncing off, plunging downwards.

“Luna!” I grunted, forcing myself to move, jogging around the corner, slinging my shotgun and reloading my rifle as I went. “You alright? Everyone okay?” I called out, getting a mixed response from the team, even as I cursed, checking my side and wincing over what I damn well knew were broken ribs.

“I will be!” Todds growled, squinting and firing a trio of rounds into another turret, before cursing. “We’ve got movement up above boss!”

“What is it?” I called back, making it to Luna’s side and cutting the pants leg away, looking over the damage to the prosthetic. It wasn’t bad, some dents and scratches, along with a section where a bullet had lodged, and was currently releasing repeated electrical shocks.

“What the fuck?” I dragged it free with the edge of my knife, then dropping it when it shocked me. “Capture and containment rounds!” I called out, finally realizing what it was. “The turrets aren’t firing full on either!”

I’d known I was lucky when I took the hit to my side full on and got away with just pain, instead of a hole through-and-through as I would have had if it was an armor piercing round. Now I knew why.

“We need to get the fuck out of here,” I said definitely. “Todds, what’ve you seen?”

“Nothing you’re going to like,” he replied grimly. “Two more of those things down there, one looks like it’s been getting worked on, the other? Heavy machine guns.”

“Grenades,” I replied almost conversationally. “I think this is a situation that calls for grenades.”

“Only if you don’t mind killing the poor bastards in the frames!” Gessh pointed out.

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“Fuck’s sake,” I muttered under my breath, looking at the body that was strung out nearest to us. It was, as previously noted spread out and locked into place, but…

The more I looked at it the more convinced I was that something was insanely wrong here. More so than the fact the fucker was locked into place like a Winter’s Night ornament, but that the bodies were locked into place, with tubes inserted, feeding, draining and doing who knew what else. The victims’ faces were covered, the majority of their heads were in fact, and they were all modded, as near as could be seen, arms and legs, torsos…

“Are they alive?” I asked as Reign shocked me out of my stupor.

“What?” she snapped absently, sighting down her rifle and tracking the target below as it wound its way between stacks of equipment. “Come on you fucker, look up… just look up at me…”

“Are they dead?” I asked again, pointing at the nearby bodies.

“They’re moving, boss,” Luna replied. “Look, you want grenades or not?”

“Fuck’s sake, no, not until we know for sure what they are.” I countered the order. “But Luna, Gessh. One of you fuckers get closer to the bodies, find out what the hell they are.”

“Now?” Gessh asked, disbelievingly.

“Yes, fucking right now,” I ordered. “Head upwards, everyone, if they’re sending those fuckers from below lets head up, but if we know they’re all brain dead, or whatever, then it gives us options, alright? Otherwise we should be rescuing these people!”

“Yeah… we’re not rescuing them,” Luna replied. “Boss, these people have had serious levels of surgery done, whatever the system they’re connected to? I don’t see them surviving being disconnected without a LOT of credits being spent on them.”

“Just fucking do it!” I snarled, swapping the standard magazine out for an armor piercing one, then sighting in with my rifle as Reign finally let loose with a shot.

It hit the machine in the middle of the back, where two plates overlapped, denting it, but ricocheting off into the darkness. I sighted in on that same spot, as best I could down five levels and between pipes and outcroppings, and fired.

I squinted, leading the target, and fired.

I also totally missed as it twisted at the last minute, squeezing between two sections as it angled itself up towards us, the reaching metal tentacles grabbing onto protrusions and pulling the body through the gap.

My second shot rang out, along with two more as I switched to triple shot, aiming at the upturned optical sensors, as Reign fired again and again, the boom of the sniper rifle overpowering my own lesser barks.

Where my shots were powerful, and they were, it was a good fucking rifle after all, hers did considerably more damage.

The front of the machine jerked and shivered as it rocked under the impacts, before the twin miniguns on its back opened up.

Where the assault rifles of the other had been bad enough, firing at that speed, the miniguns? They were a whole new level of fucking nasty.

The rounds that flashed across the distance between us were practically a solid line of lead, and fuck they hammered into the pathetic shit we’d been hiding behind.

The steel piping was sent flying, the walls grew dents and the air was filled with glowing ricocheting rounds.

If that wasn’t enough as we ran and dodged, panicking under the insane levels of fire? The weapons tracked us. Lines of solid light drew across the gap as Reign, Todds and I frantically ran across the gantry, and the metalwork was slowly sawn apart behind us.

We’d not get far, we knew that, but as soon as we sprinted around the spiraling walkway, we came under more and more turret fire as well, hitting us and sending us staggering.

I looked up, hissing in pain as my left arm died, the electrical charge the round embedded in it was discharging, finally made sense.

They were containment rounds, and while the machine that was chasing us was tearing the room apart with its concentrated fire? It too, was firing the same kind of rounds, just the sheer level of them was causing crazy levels of damage as it chased us.

There were three levels leading up and every revolution that took us out of the line of sight of the insane machine below, instead brought us into sight of the turrets!

I dragged the rifle around, firing on the turrets, stitching lines of destruction across the wall, even as they fired back at me. I side-stepped and dodged, ducked and wove, my left arm quivering over and over, until the charge dissipated.

It came back online, twitching, the muscles realigning as the arm returned to factory default, rebooting… and I twisted, bring it up as I saw a new turret ahead.

It fired and I couldn’t dodge in time, not running as I was.

Three hits, shoulder, lower arm, then stomach, and I hissed. My armor was doing fuck all to resist these, the tips coated in some kind of impact glue, discharging shock upon shock, freezing my cybernetics.

And the hit to the stomach?

Too close to my spine.

My legs gave out and I tumbled to the floor, crashing on the steel framing, bouncing, the rifle trapped under me as I thrashed.

Gessh and Luna were nowhere in sight, hell they must have gone a different way to avoid the turrets, but nearby I could see Reign was down as well, shaking, convulsing as the turrets hit us both again, and again, single shot now, clearly a suppression round until we could be captured, but fuck!

Todds…

I forced my right hand to release the grip of the rifle, curling the fingers through the gaps in the metal walkway and dragging myself forward, hissing in pain as the turret switched from ‘he’s down, keep him down’ into ‘shoot that motherfucker again and again’ mode.

I cried out, then convulsed as three rounds hit me near on simultaneously and I bit down on my tongue, shaking as the muscles tensed.

After a few seconds as the latest rounds ran out of the fast releasing charges, I regained control, letting out a bloody sigh and a gurgle, my teeth having chewed the shit outta my tongue in that last round… but the convulsing and my fingers being laced through the walkway had an unexpected bonus.

I’d dragged myself out of the line of fire entirely without knowing it. My left arm began the reboot process, as did my spinal taps, but I didn’t have the luxury of time…

I could hear heavy firing still going on below and somewhere off to the side, rounds were hitting the walkway nearby, sending weak pulses through the metal as I dragged a medium medikit free—I didn’t need a medium, hell a small would have probably done, but I didn’t have the luxury of time to fuck around.

This was what came to hand, this was what was getting used.

I jabbed it into my tongue, keeping myself pressed as far into the corner as I could as I tried not to scream and let the stream of nanites fall free.

They poured into the chewed tongue, and then out and over it. A small portion was used in a flash, rebuilding and repairing, while the majority searched my body for more damage.

I dumped the injector, and dragged my hurricane revolver free, twisting and lining up on the nearest turret, firing one shot before taking a hit to the side of the head that had me crashing down again.

This time the surge of electricity was dampened by the helmet—a feature I’d not needed before, but fucking loved already—but the sheer impact had almost knocked me out.

I struggled back into my tiny safe zone, shaking my head, then trying again, this time aiming for the fucker that was keeping Reign down.

That one I got, the cascade of sparks and the explosion as something detonated in the wall under the turret making that clear, even as more fire rang out, and voices rose.

“Boss! Reign!” Todds shouted out. “If you can hear me, you need to move to the bodies!”

I shook myself, twisting and squinting through the metal at the slowly turning massive rack filed with them, then down, noting that the big fucker was in sight again, and it’d soon get its guns on us again.

I might have survived the suppression rounds so far, but there was no chance that if that fucker hit me I was just going for a nap. That was dirt-nap territory right there.

Possibly in a small box due to the loss of limbs.

“Turret!” I barked out, shifting slightly and trying to hit the one that had me pinned again, failing miserably. “We’re pinned by a turret…”

“I’m coming!” Luna called, and I twisted, my heart in my mouth as I saw her swing into sight, literally clinging to the outside of the frame that held someone.

“Get back!” I screamed. “The turret…”

I leant out of cover again, ignoring the shots that rang out straight away, firing at the turret over and over until it took me down, spasming, and Reign dragged me into cover again.

“You crazy bastard!” She groaned, shaking her hands free of the wash of electricity from touching me. “Stay down!”

“The turrets…” I groaned, and she shook her head.

“They won’t fire on the bodies!” She cut me off, and I stared at her confused. “The turrets and the tank thing!” she explained. “Gessh and Luna got too close to the bodies, and they stopped being tracked! Whoever controls this place doesn’t want their ‘farm’ damaged!”

“Shit, seriously?” I groaned, shaking my hand and trying to get some feeling back into it.

“Yeah, you crazy brave bastard,” she said, a smile of pride clear in her voice as she reloaded her sniper rifle. “Get ready, Todds is…”

She broke off as Todds opened fire, the turret exploding, before he called out to us.

“All clear, now move!”

Reign scrambled to her feet before I could make sense of the world, sniper rifle slung onto her back as she backed up, squinting at the edge of the walkway, and the distance to the gently swinging bodies.

Then she ran and leapt off the side.

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